RIM: BlackBerry sales to U.S. government on the rise

Research In Motion’s BlackBerry line remains the platform choice for nearly half a million federal workers, including President Barack Obama. While the company struggles with consumers and the enterprise market, sales of BlackBerry devices are growing within the U.S. Government, Bloomberg reported on Monday. “Compared to the enterprise over the last year and a half or so, the federal business on whole is up,” said Scott Totzke, who runs RIM’s U.S. government sales business. “The employee base is shrinking, so if we’re looking at a market with fewer employees and our install base is stable to slightly up, that would seem to indicate that we have an increasing market share.” RIM sold 400,000 BlackBerry devices to the federal government in the past year, and more existing clients upgraded to the newer BlackBerry 7 devices and added BlackBerry servers, Totzke said. He added that 40% of RIM’s government customers also upgraded to new devices in the past 12 months. Some agencies are changing their policies, however, and allowing workers to choose other smartphones, which may impact BlackBerry’s government market share moving forward.